Re: Ladder Play

boson0 · Wed, 23 Feb 2000 12:52:41 -0800

Eric H. wrote:
"Incidentally, I'm always
frustrated by teams complaining about repeat matchups in the
ladder play playoffs. In tournaments with more
traditional playoffs that involve only the top teams,
rematches are the norm--nobody complains when a tournament
comes down to a two out of three final between teams
that already played twice before in a round robin and
then split field secondary round robin. In the NAQT
ICT format there are no rematches until the final
four rounds, which are playoffs against exactly those
teams adjacent to you in the standings and with whom
you are in direct competition for final positioning.
A rematch or two here, in this sort of playoff
situation, shouldn't be so worrisome to people. If you have
a second match with the same team--or even, with
one team, a third match--it is because those are
exactly the teams with whom you are contesting for final
positioning; they should be the teams with which you are most
closely matched as to performance in the
tournament."

Well, as one of the players who frustrates you with my
opinion of ladder play, let me explain why it bothers
me:

The NAQT ICT is my favorite tournament of the year:
the toughest competition from the widest diversity of
schools. The power-matched seeding rounds followed by the
swiss-pairs works very well, sorting out the teams into
pretty-much where they will end up. However, I think that the
separation between teams (say) 5 spots apart on the ensuing
ladder is not very much. One lucky win or unlucky loss
or unlucky seeding can cause teams to be moved
around a little. Thus any team has a reasonable shot of
beating or losing to a team a few places away from it
(higher or lower) in the rankings.

What I don't
like (as a player) is I don't have the opportunity to
play against teams more than 1 or 2 rankings away from
me. These would likely be exciting, close games - the
type everyone would like to play. Instead we end up
playing against teams exactly one spot above us or below
us. These teams are very likely to be at our level,
and we will probably have close games, so a victory
or a loss is equally likely and teams will be
probably face each other again as they bounce up and down
a place or two.

As well, teams have areas of
varying strengths and weaknesses. For example, team 9 may
be able to consistenly beat team 10 while
consistently losing to team 8. This doesn't necessarily mean
that team 10 will consistently lose to team 8. In
ladder play, teams 8 and 10 may never play.

Last
year, PSU played Michigan B very often (including 3
matches at the NAQT SCT and 2 or 3 at the ICT). I very
much enjoyed these games - all were close and
exciting. However, playing them for the 5th or 6th time
didn't solve anything really: we already knew that both
teams were at just about exactly the same level and
picking the winner was akin to flipping a coin. It would
have been nice to play other teams ranked close to us
which we hadn't played yet.

I understand that
ladder play is a compromise: trying to get a definite
ranking among teams first-last, and that there are
disadvantages to most other systems.

One vague idea that
will take some figuring out to see how possible it is:
how about just continuing the swiss pairs until the
end, but allowing rematches for the last (however
many) rounds? Here, teams will be playing those at
their level, but movement in the ladder is much more
possible, and teams will face more opponents.

Rob
Knobel